What is a Tindaloo Curry?

Now and again we get an email about different types of curry dishes. And in the last couple of weeks we’ve had emails asking about a tindaloo.

Now none of us in the Curry Focus office has ever eaten a tindaloo, although we have eaten (hot) vindaloos and the occasional (very hot) phal.

We agree that vindaloo is the hottest one that we like and that anything hotter is risking having an exploding mouth, stomach or heart.

This is not just a glib comment – we regularly see curry-eating contests where people are challenged to eat a super-hot curry and the common feature of these competitions is that the person doing the eating has to sign a disclaimer saying that they are eating the curry at their own risk.

We asked around at our favourite local curry houses and did some searching on the Internet and the general result was that a tindaloo is a vindaloo with more chillies or chilli powder. So a tindaloo is hot – very hot.

So is a tindaloo hotter than a phal? Expert opinion from the curry houses is divided. Some say that a phal is the hottest whereas some say that a tindaloo is hottest.

But opinion is really not that important when you reach these really hot curry levels because tindaloos and phals are hot, hot, hot.

To our knowledge, hardly any curry houses have tindaloo on the menu so maybe a tindaloo is hotter than a phal (why bother having tindaloo on the menu if it is so hot that hardly anybody would ever order it?).

But then again, not many curry houses have phal on the menu.

I remember regularly eating phals years ago when I was younger.

But this was after consuming large amounts of beer so my tastebuds would have been unconscious even before I reached the curry house.

Things have changed since then and I now prefer tasting what I’m eating and a madras is more my style.